Marketing at the Speed of Light

There has been a lot of discussion about the lack of consumer response to online marketing. Click-through rates on banner ads are sinking to below traditional direct marketing levels of 1% and lower. Untargeted email marketing (spam) is inundating the consumer and producing low response rates -- not a surprise to experienced marketing professionals. But what about a targeted campaign, can that work and how fast? Heck, that is what the pundits have for years declared the web to be, a 1-to-1 environment.

In our recent experience, a highly targeted email survey message, with a modest online incentive for responding produced a 4.2% consumer response rate in the first 90 minutes! The response then reached 24% after only 24 hours, and then finally trickled in after that. The message is the same online as it is offline - great response can be generated by the right audience, creative execution and solid offer.

Integrated Web and email campaigns have other benefits in addition to the opportunity for great response rates. The complete life cycle of a simple test campaign can be created, rolled out, measured and analyzed in days rather than months. Reporting on the campaign can be real-time and dynamic, allowing for in-depth response segmentation in a short period of time. And perhaps best of all, targeted email campaigns are often cheaper than their offline counterparts.

A few recent Online Industry factlets:
* Travel leads the pack in online purchasing. According to Forrester Research, consumer travel represented 24% of all 1998 business-to-consumer sales. PhoCusWright quotes 1999 Internet travel bookings will reach $6 billion.

* Jupiter Communications determined for many categories that the cost of customer acquisition on the web is somewhere between 1.5 and 2.5 times the charge of an average order.

About the Author


DBMarkets@aol.com
http://www.msdbm.com